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Nature to get legal rights in Bolivia

After decades in which environmentalism wasn’t really taken serious, big steps are being made in the right direction; however, without any legal guidelines, it’s often hard to implement measures that can protect nature and fight climate change. But now, the intriguing idea of giving legal rights to natural systems is getting more and more attention.

Bolivia’s Law of Mother Nature is set to pass, which will redefine the mineral riches as “blessings” and is expected to lead to radical new conservation.

“It has to happen. We have to be able to give legal protection and consideration to the rest of the natural world,” said Patricia Siemen, executive director of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence. “It’s in the human best interest, as well as the larger natural world’s.”

The first article of the Mother Nature Law says (translated from Spanish) that every human activity has to “achieve dynamic balance with the cycles and processes inherent in Mother Earth,” with Mother Earth defined as “a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.”. A Nature ministry will be formed and issues will be addressed thoroughly.

That this law appeared in Bolivia is no surprised; at a spiritual level, they were influenced by the nature loving traditions, and at a pragmatic level, the glaciers which provide Bolivia with freshwater are melting, and most of the cities are likely to become wastelands in less than a century if things don’t change – once again showing that the line between protecting nature and protecting people is very thin, and sometimes even inexistant. Hopefully, the law will pass, and more other countries will follow in Bolivia’s footsteps; we will keep you posted as things continue to develop.